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Leaders again fail to form coalition government in Greece

Socialist who made debt deal gets chance

By Rachel Donadioand Niki Kitsantonis New York Times News Service

Posted:
05/09/2012 10:53:24 PM MDT

Updated:
05/09/2012 10:54:36 PM MDT

ATHENS, Greece -- Greece's political leaders failed again Wednesday to form a government, as increasingly anxious and irritated European leaders urged the country to keep its commitments to creditors and decide whether it wanted to stay with the euro.

"We want Greece to stay in the eurozone, but whether Greece stays in the eurozone is in Greece's hands, and it's now a decision to be taken in Greece," the German foreign minister, Guido Westerwelle, said in Brussels.

Alexis Tsipras, the rising star of Greek politics and the leader of the Coalition of the Radical Left, known as SYRIZA, which made unexpectedly large gains in Sunday's elections, said he would hand in his mandate today after failing to form a leftist coalition based on rejecting Greece's loan agreement.

The opportunity to form a new government passes on today to the Socialist leader, Evangelos Venizelos, who negotiated the unpopular debt deal. If he, too, fails to find any common ground with his rivals, as is expected, that will throw the country into a second round of elections that Greece's foreign lenders fear will lead to still more instability.

Tsipras said Wednesday that his party had tried its best. "The vision, the dream of a government of the left, cannot be realized," he said. He added that even if the party had not formed a government, it had changed the debate to the point that the formerly dominant parties that had signed the loan agreement were now indicating they might agree to demand it be renegotiated.

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He had demanded that the departing leaders withdraw their support for a $170 billion loan deal signed in February with Greece's foreign creditors as a condition for forming a government with his party, SYRIZA. The new government would revoke the austerity measures, such as wage and pension cuts, that were part of the loan deal with the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund, and would impose a moratorium on Greece's debt repayments for three years, until the country could emerge from recession.

The anti-austerity ground-

swell has severely weakened the parties that signed the loan agreement, the Socialists and the center-right New Democracy. They fear they might fare even worse in new elections than they did in the first vote.

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